5.0 PHOTOGRAPHY⧉
A photograph can preserve a family moment, send directions, record a specimen or become a print whose appearance matters for its own sake. These purposes ask different things of the camera. A document needs legible information; a portrait may need an expression more than clean shadows.
Part 2, Fundamentals, Part 3, Visual perception and color and Part 4, Color spaces and color technology explain the measurements and their interpretation. Here we use that knowledge to make photographs: choose a viewpoint, control motion and focus, work with the light, develop the capture and prepare it for viewing. The cases connect those decisions, including what to do when the first attempt fails.
Computation extends the choices, but it also adds assumptions. A burst must align changing content; synthetic defocus needs a depth estimate; a tone-mapped image must fit an output. The practical question is whether the result preserves what this photograph needs to say or measure.
The controls also expose how much authorship enters a photograph before any software edit. Viewpoint and timing select the event; aperture and focus decide which distances remain distinct; lighting changes the scene itself; development and printing shape its tones. These decisions are often unobtrusive because the finished picture remains recognizable as a view of the world. Chapter 5.8, Photographic representation and its limits examines why a faithful measurement and a realistic-looking picture are different goals. The computational methods that follow extend choices already present in photography.
Contents of this part
- 5.1 The camera as an instrument
- 5.2 Exposure and capture timing
- 5.3 Viewpoint, lenses, and focus
- 5.4 Working with light
- 5.4.1 Natural illumination
- 5.4.2 Flash
- 5.4.3 Flash metering
- 5.4.4 Indirect illumination and bounce flash
- 5.4.5 Multiple-point lighting
- 5.5 Developing and editing a photograph
- 5.6 Preparing photographs for viewing
- 5.7 Photographic situations and tradeoffs
- 5.7.1 A moving person indoors
- 5.7.2 A backlit portrait
- 5.7.3 An interior with a bright window
- 5.7.4 A close-up object
- 5.7.5 A phone document capture
- 5.7.6 Adapting the cases: wildlife
- 5.7.7 Adapting the cases: night and sky
- 5.7.8 When the intended result is abstract
- 5.7.9 When the apparatus changes the problem
- 5.7.10 One frame, or a body of work
- 5.8 Photographic representation and its limits
- 5.8.1 Compensation, accentuation, conflict
- 5.8.2 The picture is flat: depth and its cues
- 5.8.3 The picture is static: time and motion
- 5.8.4 One viewpoint, and a finite frame
- 5.8.5 The contrast is limited: dynamic range and gamut
- 5.8.6 Resolution depends on the task
- 5.8.7 Authorship and what the photograph claims
- 5.8.8 Faithful is not the same as realistic
- 5.8.9 Choosing the instant, choosing the viewpoint
- 5.8.10 Time and focus select information
- 5.8.11 Filters and lighting: building the scene's light
- 5.8.12 The darkroom: tone, dodging, and burning
- 5.8.13 Make-up and retouching: authoring the subject
- 5.8.14 Getting closer: systematic capture and the biases that remain
- 5.9 Photography TLDR